There has for some years been known a problem of how one party online (such as one eBay user or one user of a dating website) can be assured that a counterparty on-line actually is who the counterparty describes himself as being.
In eBay's U.S. Pat. No. 6,466,917 issued Oct. 15, 2002 by Goyal et al., for “Method and apparatus for verifying the identity of a participant within an on-line auction environment”, there is described a certain identity verification process and identity verified icon. Although the eBay.com website describes the availability of an identity verification process, what is offered thereon does not appear to have been widely taken up by eBay users.